A New York-based company is turning a big chunk of downtown Vancouver real estate into shared office space for tech startups and freelancers.

WeWork announced Wednesday that it’s taking over seven floors in the Bentall III tower in a bid to attract 1,500 people to what it refers to as a “community of creators.”

While the concept isn’t new in the city — Regus offers short-term office space at nine locations in Vancouver, for example — WeWork will offer one of the biggest single locations with a specific focus on technology, spread over 80,000 square feet of office space.

It speaks to the increasing momentum of Vancouver’s tech sector, says WeWork general manager John Slavet.

“Vancouver has always been in our sights” based on its ranking as a top global city with a hot tech sector and its location as a gateway to Asia, Slavet said.

WeWork, which started up seven years ago, now has 138 locations in 38 cities ranging from New York to London and Shanghai. Slavet expects Vancouver’s location, to be known as WeWork Burrard Station, to be open by the fall.

At its most basic, WeWork freelance members can sign up for access to a “hot desk,” which means they can use any desk available in a shared space.

Other options include dedicated desks, offices available on a monthly basis and entire floors on a specified-term basis. The company hasn’t yet finalized its pricing.

Slavet said WeWork’s members in other cities range from freelancers and startups to firms looking for a location for employees on remote, short-term projects, and even multi-national companies requiring short-term space.

“The No. 1 thing we do is build communities,” said Slavet, who says WeWork allows people to move home-based enterprises into a work setting and give them an opportunity to collaborate.

That idea of collaboration is an important one to Joe Facciolo, co-founder of the gift-sharing mobile app Guusto, who had the chance to work out of a similar co-working space at the Wavefront business incubator in downtown Vancouver.

“Honestly, getting out of your living room, out of your bathrobe and into a co-working space is one of the best things a startup can do,” Facciolo said. “It was one of the best things we ever did.”

Facciolo said being at Wavefront helped expand his professional network and exposed him to mentorship and even potential funding sources that entrepreneurs wouldn’t necessarily find if they were distracted by chores needing done in a home office.

The development is good news for Vancouver’s entrepreneurs, said Ken Peacock, vice-president and chief economist of the Business Council of B.C., but it also speaks to a trend toward more short-term, project-based employment in the so-called “gig economy.”

For Ian McKay, CEO of the Vancouver Economic Commission, WeWork’s arrival in Vancouver is an important addition to the city’s burgeoning, so-called “technology ecosystem,” giving startups more options to build a presence without worrying about leasing office space.

It also helps validate Vancouver as a startup hub, McKay said, following its recent ranking as the top Canadian city (15th overall) for startups in a survey of more than 50 global cities by the think tank Startup Genome.

Commercial realtor Matt Walker said WeWork’s deal won’t have a big impact on the overall downtown market, which has seen a handful of new top-quality buildings in recent years and has a vacancy rate of 7.2 per cent.

Shared office space, in a location such as WeWork or Regus, is often the best option for companies in the early stages of development, said Walker, principal of the firm Avison Young.

But office lease-holders that have space they want to sublet can likely remain competitive with shared-office operations because, while rental rates are cheaper, the costs of additional shared services, such as reception or security, can add up.

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